Kentucky

Allison Grimes Ethics: Do Parties, Candidates And Citizens Really Think Lying Is A Legitimate Campaign Strategy?

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Alison Lundergan Grimes

This is hard for me. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky)is among my least favorite U.S. Senators, and conservative hit man James O’Keefe defines unethical journalism. But O’Keefe’s sneaky tactics, the smug candor of McConnell opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes’ staff and supporters, and her own blatantly misleading statements make it obvious that she and the Kentucky Democrats think that it is acceptable to lie outright about a crucial policy issue to win an election. It isn’t. Any candidate who thinks that way is unqualified for office. I’d love to see McConnell lose to an ethical candidate on his merits. or lack of them. Grimes, however, is a liar, and apparently her staff and supporters are fine with that.

O’Keefe-produced videos show five employees of the Grimes campaign, local Democratic Party affiliates and a key supporter opining that Grimes is faking her support for the coal industry out of political expediency, and will default to the national party’s anti-coal stance the second she hits Washington. Continue reading →

A Judicial Jumbo!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Jumbo

To remind not-so-regular visitors here: a Jumbo is a special Ethics Alarms award for conduct that emulates the gag from the Broadway musical and film “Jumbo,” in which Jimmy Durante, as a circus clown trying to steal an elephant, is caught red-handed by a sheriff, and asked, “Where are you going with that elephant?” “Elephant?  What elephant?,” Jimmy replied.

Carl Knochelmann Jr is candidate for Kenton County Family Court Judge court judge in Kentucky. He also owes $2,886.54 in unpaid child support to the mother of his teenage son. He has been delinquent before: at various times a court has ordered him to pay overdue child support, including $9,632 in 2003. The current $2,886 amount dates back to 2008.

His opponent, seven-year incumbent Kenton County Family Court Judge Chris Mehling, said the back child support shows Knochelmann is unfit for a judgeship responsible for enforcing child support payments, among other things.

Ya think? Although I would imagine that he will wrap up the deadbeat dad vote. Continue reading →

Curtis Morrison, The Face Of Ethics Bankruptcy

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
How did you get this way, Curtis?

How did you get this way, Curtis?

Curtis Morrison’s post at Salon, “Why I secretly recorded Mitch McConnell,’ is disturbing in the manner of those periodic exposés where a journalist gets candid answers from a soul-dead 14-year-old inner city drug dealer,  a short-order cook who hates his customers and spits in their food, mad Islamic terrorist, or venal hedge fund manager. Morrison exposes himself as a politically active, ethically ignorant zealot, and ludicrously proud of it. I’m sure that conservative bloggers will seize on his damning post as evidence of the character rot at work on the Left, but he could just as easily be a young Andrew* Breitbart, or James O’Keefe.

The chilling revelation that dawns as one reads Morrison’s  piece is that mis-wired people like him increasingly warp our political process and turn it into incoherent, useless and destructive warfare. I don’t want to think about how many will read his words and admire him, rather than feel their gorges rise, but unfortunately, it’s my job to think about it. Our task is to make sure there are fewer Curtis Morrisons in the future. Maybe his Salon article, which should horrify anyone who isn’t already beyond ethics repair, will help. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: Seniors at Lexington (Ky) Catholic High School

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The fun prom…in the parking lot.

When Lexington (Kentucky) Catholic High senior Hope Decker, 18 tried to take sophomore Tiffany Wright, 16, to the school’s senior prom as her date, school officials told the couple that they would not be admitted, because their unholy same-sex coupling violated the Catholic Church’s teachings. Defiant, the couple tried to enter the school’s gymnasium that night, where the prom was held, but as promised, their tickets were refused. So their fellow students held an impromtu protest prom outside the official one, in the parking lot. They played music from their cars, and set up a table for refreshments.

“We had a wonderful night, and we were surrounded by true friends,” Wright said. “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”

Here is what else she will remember for the rest of her life: Continue reading →

T-shirt Ethics and Bigotry In Lexington, Kentucky

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

The offensive T-shirt design. Honest.

Hands On Originals is a T-shirt company in Lexington, Kentucky that is now under fire for refusing the business of the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization, which organizes Lexington’s annual gay pride festival every June. The organization wanted to print up some T-shirts, and the company told them to take their business somewhere else. The reason: the T-shirt company is a “Christian organization”, and the owners don’t want to assist in promoting a message that goes against their religious beliefs.

The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization filed a complaint, and now there will be an investigation to decide whether this violates Lexington’s Fairness Act, which protects people and organizations from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Lexington’s mayor has weighed in against Hands On, and boycotts against the company and the closely related company Wildcat Wearhouse have been threatened. Meanwhile the attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the T-shirt company, argues that “No business owner should be forced to violate his conscience simply because someone demands it. The Constitution absolutely supports the rights of business owners to decline a request to support a message that conflicts with their deeply held convictions.”

I am not going to comment on the legal and constitutional issues, but the ethical issue is clear. Should society respect the choice of a business to refuse to provide products or services to groups, individuals or causes it opposes or objects to on moral or religious grounds? Continue reading →

The Case of the Excessively Flexible Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

A Louisville lawyer named Keith Kamenish wants to defend Dion Neal, a drug dealer, against a murder-for-hire charge.  A police informant wearing a wire recorded a hit man as he said  that he was paid by Neal to kill a competitor for him. “I put 36 slugs in that nigger’s face and stood on his head,” the independent contractor boasted, according to a transcript of the conversation filed in court. “The whole head collapsed!”

Nice.

The government is trying to get Kamenish kicked off the case, and here is why: the guy whose head collapsed, LaJuante “B.B.” Jackson, was a Kamenish client at the time of his murder. Jackson was shot just four weeks after Kamenish got Jackson released on bond on a state drug charge; the lawyer’s blood- stained business card was found in Jackson’s wallet. Continue reading →

Handshake Ethics, Professionalism, and Rand Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Democrat Jack Conway, attempting to take down his opponent for the U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, Rand Paul, decided to go low. He employed a number of personal attacks including questions about Paul’s participation in a harmless, if bizarre college prank that had been the subject of a blatantly unfair article in Gentleman’s Quarterly. It was a desperate, mean, and unprofessional performance by Conway. Paul was obviously and understandably furious.

At the end of the debate, Paul rushed by Conway, ignoring his outstretched hand. I sympathize with him. I empathize with him. In the heat of the moment, having just had my opponent smear me on television with tales out of school—literally—I might have even done the same thing, though I hope not. Nevertheless, Paul rejected a vital ritual as well as a cardinal rule of civility in the political arena, where, as in the sporting arena, the handshake after the contest sends a symbolic message of reconciliation, forgiveness, respect, and most of all, professionalism. Continue reading →

GQ’s Unethical Rand Paul Smear

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I had a college room mate who used to strip down to his BVD’s and put a traffic cone over his head. Then,using a broom as a baton, he would burst into a room where one of our other room mates was courting a date, and march around singing “Can’t get enough of those Sugar Crisp!”

He’s now a high school principal. Another of my roomies once won a bet by secretly planting a ;large pile of some form of excrement in my bed. He’s a well-respected Wall Street broker. Yet another roommate delighted in jumping out from behind doors, naked, and assaulting us with the painful move known as a “titty-twister. He a runs a construction company, and is the best father I know. And me? I spent much of my college career engineering elaborate practical jokes and capers, including an infamous scheme to steal  the new sofa in the suite of some classmates, which they had stolen from an upperclassman.

Which all goes to show that much of the conduct of college kids, in the insular womb of academia, has nothing to do with the real world, and less than nothing to do with the character, judgment, taste and decorum they will need to demonstrate in their careers and family life. Furthermore, conduct that would be wholly unacceptable and even illegal off campus is hijinks and social experimentation on it. Anyone who doesn’t know that either never went to college, or had a really boring four years there.

It is in this context that the so-called Rand Paul “expose” in Gentleman’s Quarterly is so unfair, so contrived, and such atrocious and unethical journalism. Continue reading →

Credential Deceit From Rand Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Rand Paul’s resume dishonesty is not in the same league with Richard Blumenthal claiming Vietnam service that wasn’t. It is closer in unethical heft to Illinois Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk’s representation of a group military award as in individual one on his resume. Still, if candidates for national office show a penchant for dishonesty and deceit before they are elected, what can we expect later, when they have the keys to the candy store and genuine power? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce Deux: Rand Paul Whiffs on Accountability

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

G.O.P Kentucky Senate nominee Rand Paul has pulled off a record-worthy achievement: he has earned Ethics Dunce status twice in a week’s time, something no one else, even serial Ethics Dunces like Sen. John Kerry and Tom DeLay, were able to do in the nearly seven years the designation has been in existence. He did not earn it the old fashioned way, however, as the old Smith-Barney ads used to say. Most Ethics Dunces do something, but in both cases Paul has proven himself worthy by what he says he believes.  This makes him kind of a classic Ethics Dunce. He literally doesn’t understand basic ethical values, or if he does, can’t articulate them. Continue reading →